A discussion of the main issues that beset modern time and philosophy by locating these same issues in artworks and describing closely what they reveal. This volume is divided between contemporary and prehistoric art in order to reveal the presumptions of "Western" culture.

A discussion of the main issues that beset modern time and philosophy by locating these same issues in artworks and describing closely what they reveal. While respecting their differences, art and philosophy are thus made to cross back and forth into one another, delineating in fresh ways our concerns about nature, the human and non-human, the body, femininity, ecology, technology, textism, the end of history, community, postmodernism, relativism and non-Eurocentric ethics. A "philosophy of line" gathers these issues, opposing the current dominance of "word" and linguistic analyses. Art has long been aware that the line communicates meaning at least as well as the word. The volume is divided between contemporary and prehistoric art in order to reveal the presumptions of "Western" culture and how we might move beyond it. Since the book is a critique of Eurocentric thinking and prose, it works at finding new styles of both. Its philosophical meditation is directed equally to those who are intellectually interested in contemporary and prehistoric art, in theories of postmodern culture and criticism, and in anthropology.

Part I. The Prehistoric. Book I: Sculptural Archaic Thought. 1: Thinking of the Future Archaically: In the Shape of a Peplos. 2: Drawing Out Prehistory: Archaic Sculptural Thought. 3: Appendix of Quotations. Book II: The Minoan and the Philosophical. I: Swirling Beyond Our Time: Along Minoan and Nazcan Lines. II: The Minoan Midst: Ceramic Swirling Thought. Part II: The Contemporary. Book III: The Regular and the Sinuous. I: Thinking the Line Through Serra's Sculpture. II: The Line of Performance: Pina Bausch's Dance-Theatre. Book IV: Here to Zero.